What You Should Know About PlayStation Now

Sony PlayStation Now sounds like a schmaltzy documentary, but it's actually the implementation of Gaikai we've been anticipating since Sony bought the game streaming company. Beginning this summer (or in late January if you're a beta tester), PlayStation Now users will be able to stream PlayStation 3 games from vast server arrays to their PlayStation 3s or PlayStations 4s or PlayStation Vitas or 2014 Bravia TVs.

Support for all of those platforms won't happen at once; Sony's blog explains streaming will begin with PS3/PS4 consoles, come to the Vita next, and then Bravia TVs. After that, PlayStation Now will expand beyond the land of Sony hardware, which means tablets and smartphones. Android's almost certainly a given, but iOS and PC/Mac web browsers could be targets, too. Gaikai's original demo made Mass Effect 2 playable in a browser.

Photo credit: Sony Electronics Flickr.

Sony purchased Gaikai in July 2012. In 2013, Sony announced that the PS4's x86 architecture, which was a major departure from the PS3's PowerPC Cell processor, ruled out backwards compatibility. The solution was streaming old games from the cloud via Gaikai, but the technology wouldn't be ready for launch, and that was about all we heard about the streaming for the rest of the year.

Theoretically, PlayStation Now could allow gamers to stream thousands of PlayStation games, from the PS1, PS2, and PS3 to modern hardware. But there are a lot of variables we don't know about. For a good gaming experience, PlayStation Now will need to be low latency, and that will be affected by how big the data centers are, where they're located, and the speed of the end user's broadband connection. With low bandwidth, games are going to be laggy and artifacted.

Even with a blazing 50 or 100 megabit connection, the pressure will be on Sony to deliver a high bitrate stream at as low a latency as possible. Sony recommends at least a 5 megabit connection, but the specifics will likely evolve a bit after PlayStation Now goes into beta in late January.

PlayStation Now leads off with PS3 games, and we don't know if that library will just include first-party titles or a wider selection of games. Likewise, PS1 and PS2 games aren't announced for streaming, but seem likely for the future. Sony's blog states games will be rentable individually, but a subscription option will also be available. PlayStation Now will likely tie into Sony's PlayStation Plus service in some way, but that all-you-can-eat subscription won't be a free giveaway.

Early reports about Now from CES 2014 are positive. Polygon writes "Performance in games like The Last of Us and God of War: Ascension was impressive. Lag input was noticeable, seemingly more so on Vita when moving The Last of Us' Joel and waiting a beat for him to respond, but more than playable. Even the higher frame rate, faster paced action of Ascension was playable, though compression artifacts and more muted colors were present."

A couple more tidbits: Now users will be able to play multiplayer games as normal, against or with players playing games with a disc or download version of a game. The Vita's back touch panel will compensate for its missing trigger and clickable stick buttons. The DualShock 3 will sync with 2014 Bravia TVs over USB or Bluetooth.